Ahira's Hangar

Scientists: '10th planet' only slightly larger than Pluto

Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Posted: 2:33 p.m. EDT (18:33 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- An icy ball discovered last year in the outer solar system is only slightly larger than Pluto, casting doubt on previous estimates that the so-called 10th planet was significantly larger, scientists reported Tuesday.

Previous estimates by ground-based telescopes suggested the object known as 2003 UB313 was 30 percent bigger than Pluto.

But the latest measurement by the Hubble Space Telescope has a smaller margin of error and is probably a more accurate estimate, said lead researcher Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

According to Hubble, UB313's diameter measures 1,490 miles (2,397 kilometers), give or take 60 miles (100 kilometers). Pluto is about 1,422 miles (2,288 kilometers) across.

Brown previously reported that UB313 could be up to 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) in diameter based on its brightness. He said he was surprised by Hubble's findings, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal.

The discovery of UB313, which Brown nicknamed Xena, reinvigorated the debate about what is considered a planet. Some astronomers have questioned whether Pluto should keep its planetary status, while others say UB313 should be the 10th planet because it is bigger than Pluto.

The International Astronomical Union, which oversees the naming of planets, has not taken a stance on the issue.

If it is determined to be the 10th planet, UB313 would be the farthest-known body in the solar system.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Probe photographs Venus' south pole
European mission will study greenhouse effect
Thursday, April 13, 2006; Posted: 11:59 a.m. EDT (15:59 GMT)
BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- A photo of the south pole of Venus taken by the Venus Express spacecraft was released Thursday -- revealing a twist of cloud swirling around the far end of Earth's neighbor that closely resembles cloud formations around the more familiar north pole.

The image, taken from a distance of roughly 200,000 kilometers (124,000 miles) and released by the Max Planck institute in Germany, is grainy, but shows pale yellow clouds ribbed with darker spirals.

It was taken by a camera run by the institute that is one of seven instruments aboard the European Space Agency's Venus Express, which went into orbit around the planet Monday. (Full story)

The space agency will use the spacecraft's instruments to search for clues about why Venus wound up with an atmosphere almost 90 times denser than Earth's and shrouded in clouds of sulfuric acid.

Of key importance will be studying Venus' strong greenhouse effect -- the way carbon dioxide traps the sun's heat -- and the permanent hurricane force winds that constantly circle it high in the atmosphere.

The instruments on board the $260 million craft include spectrometers to measure temperature and analyze the atmosphere and a special camera that will concentrate on documenting whether Venus' many volcanoes are active.

Venus is the nearest planet to Earth within the solar system, and the two have similar mass and density. Both have inner cores of rock and are believed to have been formed at roughly the same time.

Yet despite those similarities, the two have vastly different atmospheres, with Venus' composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide and very little water vapor. Thanks to runaway warming from its greenhouse effect, Venus has the hottest surface of all the planets.

If everything goes according to plan, the European agency plans to keep the probe active for 500 days, with the possibility of extending its life by another 500 days.

The probe, coated with a metallic polymer skin to protect it from heat, is a sister craft to ESA's Mars Express, which was launched in June 2003 and reached Martian orbit in December of that year.

Venus Express was launched November 9 atop a Russian booster rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The last mission to Venus was NASA'S Magellan probe, launched in 1989. It completed more than 15,000 orbits between 1990 and 1994, and mapped almost all of Venus, revealing towering volcanoes, gigantic rifts and sharp-edged craters.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Snake robots could aid in rescues
'Breadstick' and 'Pepperoni' are being tested

Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Posted: 9:20 p.m. EDT (01:20 GMT)
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- For most people, snakes seem unpleasant or even threatening. But Howie Choset sees in their delicate movements a way to save lives.

The 37-year-old Carnegie Mellon University professor has spent years developing snakelike robots he hopes will eventually slither through collapsed buildings in search of victims trapped after natural disasters or other emergencies.

In recent weeks, Choset and some of his students made what he said was an industry breakthrough: enabling the articulated, remote-controlled devices to climb up and around pipes.

Rescue workers say such robots would be useful because current equipment has limited mobility and usually has to be lowered into fallen structures, Choset said.

"Right now, the way to get to these trapped survivors is to pull the rubble out one rock at a time," Choset said. "So our dream is to have the snake robot thread through this collapsed rubble and get to victims more quickly."

Robot demand rises with big disasters

He said it generally takes about 90 minutes for rescue workers to gain access to a disaster site, while a robot can immediately delve into rubble. They are also safer because "you don't have people pushing rocks around you," he said.

Dan Kara is president of Robotics Trends, a company that publishes an online industry magazine and runs robotics trade shows. He said there are other snakelike robots being developed, mainly at universities, but did not know of one that could climb pipes.

Kara also said the market for rescue robots has expanded as high-profile disasters have unfolded in recent years.

The Carnegie Mellon machines are designed to carry cameras and electronic sensors and can be controlled with a joystick. They wriggle with the help of small electric motors, or servos, commonly used by hobbyists in model airplanes.

Built from lightweight aluminum or plastic, the robots are about the size of a human arm or smaller. They are semiautonomous and can sense which way is up, but are only as good as their human operators.

"The rescue workers are the heroes," he said. "These are just better tools."

Our dream is to have the snake robot thread through this collapsed rubble and get to victims more quickly.
-- Howie Choset, Carnegie Mellon University
professor

The robots, with nicknames such as "Breadstick" and "Pepperoni," have successfully climbed up the insides and outsides of storm drains, negotiated large gaps between pieces of debris, and maneuvered through underbrush and fences, Choset said.

At a Carnegie Mellon lab, one of the robots wiggled up and down a clear plastic tube.

Sam Stover, a search team manager with the Federal Emergency Management Agency based in Indiana, said sniffer dogs are still the best search tool for rescue workers, but that they can only be used effectively when workers have access to damaged buildings.

Stover, among the rescue workers who handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said snake robots would have helped rescuers search flooded houses in that disaster.

Choset said the robots may not be ready for use for another five to 10 years, depending on funding.

For now, he and his team plan to continue testing the machines at mock disaster sites around the country.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Study: Ancient meteor storm pummeled Earth
By Ker Than
SPACE.com


Monday, April 17, 2006; Posted: 12:56 p.m. EDT (16:56 GMT)
(SPACE.com) -- New dating of lunar rocks add to a growing body of evidence that the moon and Earth were pelted by a flurry of large meteorites during a relatively brief geologic time span about 3.9 billion years ago.

Known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," or LHB, this period of heightened meteorite activity would have had important implications for life on Earth, since it coincides roughly with the time that scientists think the first primitive bacteria appeared on our planet.

Researchers examined about 50 different melted rock samples collected by astronauts during the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Using radiometric dating techniques, they found that all but a few of the rocks were between 3.8 and 4 billion years old. Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old.

Furthermore, many of the samples displayed different chemical "fingerprints," which suggests that they were formed from different meteorites and lunar rocks.

"The evidence is clear that there was repeated bombardment by meteorites," said study team member Robert Duncan from Oregon State University.

The NASA-funded study will be published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the international Meteoritical Society.

Meteorites affected Earth as well
All you have to do is look at the moon to see that it has been hit hard. All the craters are a record of past impacts, and unless obliterated by a subsequent larger impact, the craters remain relatively intact because the moon has no air to weather them and little internal activity like the volcanoes and earthquakes that constantly remake our planet.

Any meteorite activity that affected the moon probably affected Earth as well, scientists say. But terrestrial evidence for the LHB is scarce.

"Unfortunately, we haven't found many very old rocks on Earth because our planet's surface is constantly renewed by plate tectonics, coupled with erosion," Duncan said.

In 2002, however researchers discovered in sedimentary rocks a version of the element tungsten in amounts not normally found on Earth. The tungsten is believed to be of extraterrestrial origin and was estimated to about 3.7 billion years old or older.

Implications for life
If the pockmarked surface of the Moon is any indication, early Earth was pelted by a fairly steady stream of meteorites -- some as big as 6 miles or more across -- for about 100 million years.

Any life that was present or developing on Earth at the time would have been in constant peril of being blasted out of existence.

It's possible that life emerged only after the bombardments slackened, or if it began earlier, it might have been disrupted or even reset by the intense hail of meteorites.

"Life might have taken refuge if it burrowed down into cracks or crevices or was at the bottom of the ocean," Duncan told SPACE.com. "But Earth would have been a miserable place to be alive. The moon was bombarded pretty uniformly by this process, and it's hard to imagine that life, if it was established before this time [on Earth], could have survived through."

Another intriguing possibility, say Duncan and others, is that rather than being vehicles of death and destruction, meteorites carried life, or molecules important for the emergence of life, to Earth.

Origins still mysterious
The cause of the LHB remains shrouded in mystery, but scientists have come up with creative explanations for what the triggering event might have been.

"We may have had a 10th and 11th planet that collided," Duncan said. "It's also possible that the outward migration of Neptune scattered comets and small planet bodies, inducing collisions in the asteroid belt. The close passing of a neighboring star could have had a similar effect."

Other scientists have speculated that the disruptive hijinks of a fifth terrestrial world called "Planet V" was responsible. This hypothetical planet is speculated to have formed alongside Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars but then swallowed up long ago by the Sun.

Before it was destroyed, however, Planet V might have perturbed the inner asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter because of its highly eccentric orbit. This could have caused a spike in the number of objects crossing the path of Earth and the Moon, the theory goes.

Another wild idea is that roughly 4 billion years ago, the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn entered into a synchronous resonance that threw off the orbits of the other planets and planet embryos, called "planetesimals," creating a temporary state of chaos within the inner solar system.

All of these scenarios are still highly speculative, however.



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Huge meat-eating dinosaurs may have hunted in packs

Monday, April 17, 2006; Posted: 6:09 p.m. EDT (22:09 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists are learning more about what appears to be one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs known, a two-legged beast whose bones were found several years ago in the fossil-rich Patagonia region of Argentina.

One expert called the discovery the first substantial evidence of group living by large meat-eaters other than tyrannosaurs like T. rex.

The creature, which apparently measured more than 40 feet long, is called Mapusaurus roseae. The discovery of Mapusaurus included bones from at least seven to nine of the beasts, suggesting the previously unknown animal may have lived and hunted in groups.

That hunting strategy might have allowed it to attack even bigger beasts, huge plant-eating dinosaurs.

The find was reported in 2000 by The Associated Press. It is described in the latest issue of the journal Geodiversitas by paleontologists Rodolfo Coria of the Carmen Funes Museum in Plaza Huincul, Argentina, and Philip Currie of the University of Alberta in Canada.

They oversaw the excavation of the dinosaur's remains about 15 miles south of Plaza Huincul from 1997 to 2001. Mapusaurus is estimated to have lived about 100 million years ago.

Currie, in an e-mail, said it's hard to say how long the biggest specimen was because no complete skeleton was found. He estimated it may have measured about 41 feet from the snout to the tip of the tail.

It may have been about a foot longer than Giganotosaurus, also found in Patagonia, but without a complete skeleton "you will never know," he wrote.

The Field Museum in Chicago says its T. rex skeleton, Sue, is 42 feet long.

Thomas Holtz Jr., a University of Maryland dinosaur expert, said that Mapusaurus clearly joins Giganotosaurus, T. rex and a huge African beast called Spinosaurus as among the biggest carnivorous dinosaurs. But he said it's impossible to know exactly how they rank in overall size.

The fossil record is too fragmentary, and unlikely to capture the biggest individual of each species, he said.

Spinosaurus was probably the longest species, but length is a poor indicator of overall size because tails can be shorter or longer without affecting a creature's weight very much, he said. Still, Spinosaurus was probably the biggest in overall bulk as well, he said.

Coria noted the dig showed evidence of social behavior in Mapusaurus. The excavation found hundreds of bones from several Mapusaurus individuals but none from any other creature. That suggests the animals were together before they died, Coria said.

Perhaps they hunted in packs, though there is no direct evidence for that, he said in an e-mail. Currie, in a statement from his university, speculated that pack hunting may have allowed Mapusaurus to prey on the biggest known dinosaur, Argentinosaurus, a 125-foot-long plant-eater.

Holtz called the finding the first substantive evidence of group living by giant two-legged carnivores other than tyrannosaurs. It's not clear whether the animals cooperated in hunting, as wolves or lions do, or simply mobbed their prey or just gathered around after one of them made a kill, he said.

"Mapusaurus" comes from the word for "Earth" in the language of the Mapuche tribe of western Patagonia, while "roseae" refers both to the rose-colored rock that yielded the specimens and to the name of a sponsor of the excavations.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Ancient rock art may depict exploding star
By Ker Than
SPACE.com


Monday, June 5, 2006; Posted: 1:22 p.m. EDT (17:22 GMT)
(SPACE.com) -- A rock carving discovered in Arizona might depict an ancient star explosion seen by Native Americans a thousand years ago, scientists announced today.

If confirmed, the rock carving, or "petroglyph" would be the only known record in the Americas of the well-known supernova of the year 1006.

The carving was discovered in White Tanks Regional Park just outside Phoenix, in an area believed to have been occupied by a group of Native Americans called the Hohokam from about 500 to 1100 A.D.

The finding is being announced today at the 208th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Calgary, Canada.

Night light
In the spring of 1006, stargazers in Asia, the Middle East and Europe recorded the birth of a "new star" above the southern horizon of the night sky, in the constellation Lupus, just south of Scorpio [simulation].

Unknown to them, what those ancient astronomers were actually witnessing was the swan song of a star as it blew itself apart in a violent explosion called a supernova.

Although nearly invisible today, the supernova of 1006, or SN 1006, was perhaps the brightest stellar event ever to occur in recorded human history. At its peak, the supernova was about the quarter the brightness of the moon, so radiant that people could have read by its light at midnight, scientists say.

The Hohokam petroglyph depicts symbols of a scorpion and stars that match a model showing the relative positions of the supernova with respect to the constellation Scorpius. The model was created by John Barentine, an astronomer at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and Gilbert Esquerdo, a research assistant at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona.

"If confirmed, this discovery supports the idea that ancient Native Americans were aware of changes in the night sky and moved to commemorate them in their cultural record," said Barentine, who studies Southwest archeology as a hobby.

Astronomer by day
Barentine thinks the finding could also help archeologists date other petroglyphs in the Southwest and elsewhere in the world. Dating art made by prehistoric Native Americans has traditionally been difficult because many did not have a written language and shared little in common with the culture and folklore of tribes that came later.

"Quantitative methods such as carbon-14 dating are alternative means to assign ages to works of prehistoric art, but they lack precision of more than a few decades, so any depiction in art that can be fixed to a specific year is extremely valuable," Barentine said.

A similar petroglyph discovered near Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon National Monument, New Mexico is also believed to represent a supernova, but one that occurred later, on July 4, 1054.



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Jovian storms prepare for showdown
Jupiter's Great Red, Red Jr. to duke it out for top spot

Monday, June 5, 2006; Posted: 3:25 p.m. EDT (19:25 GMT)
(SPACE.com) -- Astronomers on Earth will have ringside seats to a face-off between two of the biggest storms in the solar system.

In one corner will be Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a behemoth of a tempest that is twice as large as Earth and whose 350 miles per hour winds have been whirling for hundreds of years.

Its contender will be Oval BA, also known as "Red Jr.," a young six-year storm that is only half Great Red's size but whose winds are just as fierce.

The two are approaching each other now and are expected to have their closest approach on the Fourth of July, according to Amy Simon-Miller, an astronomer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland who has been monitoring the storms.

"There won't be a head-on collision," Simon-Miller said. "The Great Red Spot is not going to 'eat' Oval BA or anything like that."

However, the storms' outer bands are expected to pass close to one another and it's anybody's guess what will happen when they do.

This isn't the first time that such an encounter has happened. In fact, the two storms typically pass each other every two years or so.

Similar encounters happened in 2002 and 2004, but they were very anti-climactic. Aside from some "roughing" around the edges, both storms came out unscathed.

This time might be different, however, said Simon-Miller. Red Jr. could revert to its original color and change from red to white. From 2000 to 2005, Red Jr. was actually white and no different form the many other small "white ovals" circling the planet.

But in 2006, astronomers noticed a change: a red vortex formed inside the storm, the same color as the powerful Great Red Spot. Scientists believe the color change was a sign that the storm was intensifying.

Scientists think the Great Red Spot could push Oval BA toward a southern jet stream on the planet during their upcoming encounter. The jet stream blows against Oval BA's counterclockwise rotation and could slow its spin, possibly changing the storm's color back to white.

The color of the Great Red Spot itself is a mystery. According to one popular theory, the storm dredges up material from deep inside Jupiter's atmosphere, lofting it above the highest clouds where ultraviolet rays from the Sun turn color-changing compounds, called "chromophores," red.



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Copyright © 1999-2005 SPACE.com, Inc.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Earth surrounded by giant fizzy bubbles
By Robert Roy Britt
SPACE.com


Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 4:25 p.m. EDT (20:25 GMT)
(SPACE.com) -- The space above you is fizzing with activity as bubbles of superhot gas constantly grow and pop around Earth, scientists announced Tuesday.

Astronomers found the activity up where Earth's magnetic field meets a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun.

While space is commonly called a vacuum, in fact there is gas everywhere, albeit not as dense as the air you breathe.

The newfound bubbles are technically called density holes. In them, gas density is 10 times lower. The gas in the bubbles is 18,000,000 Fahrenheit (10,000,000 Celsius) instead of the 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit of the surrounding hot gas, which is known as plasma.

The bubbles were found in data collected by the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, a flotilla of four spacecraft. Researchers first thought they had an instrument glitch when the spacecrafts passed through bubbles.

"Then I looked at the data from all four Cluster spacecraft. These anomalies were being observed simultaneously by all the spacecraft. That's when I believed that they were real," said George Parks, University of California, Berkeley.

The bubbles expand to about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) and probably last about 10 seconds before bursting and being replaced by the cooler, denser solar wind, Parks and his colleagues say.

It is not known for sure how the bubbles are created, but the researchers suspect it involves the solar wind colliding with the magnetic field, which forms a boundary called the bow shock. The phenomenon is similar to the wake formed by the front of a boat.

The discovery, detailed in the journal Physics of Plasmas, could help astronomers better understand how this solar wind interacts with the magnetic field.


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Study finds more giant pandas

Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 1:24 p.m. EDT (17:24 GMT)
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Giant pandas may not be in as much danger of extinction as feared with a new British-Chinese study finding there could be twice as many living in the wild as previously thought, scientists said on Monday.

"This finding indicates that the species may have a significantly better chance of long-term viability than recently anticipated, and that this beautiful animal may have a brighter future," the scientists said in a statement.

Until now scientists thought there were about 1,590 giant pandas living in reserves in the mountains of China. Pandas, one of the world's most endangered and elusive animals, are dependent on bamboo found in that area.

But scientists from Britain's Cardiff University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences now think there could be as many as 3,000 there after a survey using a new method to profile DNA from panda faeces revealed there was more than double the number of estimated pandas in one reserve.

"This was surprising and exciting. In our opinion, the same parameters can be applied across the whole mountain range," Mike Bruford, professor of biodiversity at Cardiff University's School of Biosciences, told Reuters.

Bruford said the scientists, whose findings will be published in journal Current Biology on Tuesday, stumbled across this discrepancy in the population as they were studying the movement of male and female pandas and their territorial instincts to understand their behavior. The study found about 66 pandas are living in the Wanglang Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province -- and not 27 as estimated in the latest national survey that was conducted in 2002.

Bruford said there was no way that panda births or migration could account for so large a discrepancy and based on this finding, there may be 2,500 to 3,000 pandas in the wild.

Understanding population trends for giant pandas has been a major task for conservation authorities in China for about 30 years with three national surveys carried out but the terrain is hard to survey.

The first two surveys showed declines in numbers but the most recent survey showed signs of a recovery, helped by the Chinese government setting up a network of natural reserves and enforcing anti-poaching and anti-logging laws.

Bruford said the next step was to replicate the British/Chinese survey using its DNA method in other reserves.

The challenge then is to think beyond keeping pandas in reserves and find ways to end their isolation because inbreeding and low genetic diversity remain a possible threat to the species' long-term survival, he added.

He said one way to do this would be to build corridors between the different panda reserves.

"This (finding) means we have a halfway reasonable chance of long-term viability with conservation. It doesn't mean the panda is out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination but it gives us more time and makes a difference," Bruford told Reuters.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Norway building 'doomsday vault' to protect seeds

Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 10:05 a.m. EDT (14:05 GMT)
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- It sounds like something from a science fiction film -- a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

But Norway's ambitious project is on its way to becoming reality. Construction began Monday on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to house as many as 3 million of the world's crop seeds.

Prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland were to attend the cornerstone ceremony on Monday morning near the town of Longyearbyen in Norway's remote Svalbard Islands, roughly 620 miles from the North Pole.

Norway's Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen has called the vault a "Noah's Ark on Svalbard."

Its purpose is to ensure the survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change, and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

The seeds, packaged in foil, would be stored at such cold temperatures that they could last hundreds, even thousands, of years, according to the independent Global Crop Diversity Trust. The trust, founded in 2004, has also worked on the project and will help run the vault, which is scheduled to open and start accepting seeds from around the world in September 2007.

Oil-rich Norway first proposed the idea a year ago, drawing wide international interest, Riis-Johansen said.

The Svalbard Archipelago, 300 miles north of the mainland, was selected because it is located far from many threats and has a consistently cold climate.

Those factors will help protect the seeds and safeguard their genetic makeup, Norway's Foreign Ministry said. The vault will have thick concrete walls, and even if all cooling systems fail, the temperature in the frozen mountain will never rise above freezing due to permafrost, it said.

While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard's free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust.

The Nordic nation is footing the bill, amounting to about $4.8 million for infrastructure costs.

"This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters," Cary Fowler, the trust's executive secretary, said in a statement, adding that crop diversity is also threatened by "accidents, mismanagement and shortsighted budget cuts."

Already, some 1,400 seed banks around the world, most of them national, hold samples of their host country's crops.

But these banks are vulnerable to shutdowns, natural disasters, war and lack of funds, said Riis-Johansen.

Storing duplicate seeds in the Svalbard vault is meant to offer a fail-safe system for the planet.

The idea of a global seed bank has been around since the early 1980s, but unresolved issues, such as ownership rights to genetic material, stalled it until the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization adopted the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in 2001.

While Norway will own the vault facility, countries contributing seeds will own the material they deposit -- much as with a bank safe deposit box. The Global Crop Diversity Trust will help developing countries pay the cost of preparing and sending seeds.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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DNA may clear Confucius confusion

Sunday, June 18, 2006; Posted: 3:53 a.m. EDT (07:53 GMT)

Confucius taught principles based on peace, order, wisdom, humanity, courage and fidelity.
SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) -- Chinese claiming Confucius for an ancestor can now use a genetic test to prove a direct blood connection to the grandfather of Chinese social mores, a state newspaper said on Friday.

The fifth-century B.C. social philosopher's ideas of filial piety and deference to elders influence Chinese society and politics even today.

Now his countrymen can establish a genetic link in a test that will cost more than 1,000 yuan ($125), according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

"We would like to help these unconfirmed claimants to test their DNA and to establish a Confucius-DNA database," it quoted Deng Yajun, a DNA expert from Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Science, as saying.

How the scientists had obtained a sample of Confucius's DNA was not explained.

"One of the most difficult things in the project is to confirm the blood connections of these numerous claimants," said Kong Dewei, one of the editors of the new family tree, who has the same Chinese surname of Confucius, "Kong" in Chinese.

Association with Confucianism was fatal during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, when "old China" and its traditions were condemned as reactionary by fervent Communist Red Guards.

But since the 1990s, Beijing has been encouraging Confucianism as part of celebrating traditional Chinese culture -- and of pushing a message of obedience to those in power.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Poisonous chameleon snake discovered

Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Posted: 10:38 a.m. EDT (14:38 GMT)


Researchers scouring through the swamps of Borneo island have discovered a new species of snake that can change its skin color.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Researchers scouring swamps in the heart of Borneo island have discovered a venomous species of snake that can change its skin color, the conservation group WWF announced Tuesday.

The ability to change skin color is known in some reptiles, such as the chameleon, but scientists have seen it rarely with snakes and have not yet understood this phenomenon, the group said in a statement.

"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket," said Mark Auliya, a reptile expert and a consultant for the group. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white."

Reptiles typically change color to camouflage themselves from predators.

The 1.6-foot-long snake was discovered last year in wetlands and swamp forests around the Kapuas River in the Betung Kerihun National Park in the Indonesian part of Borneo island.

"The discovery of the 'chameleon' snake exposes one of nature's best-kept secrets. Its ability to change color has kept it hidden from science until now," said Bambang Supriyanto, a WWF specialist on Borneo.

Scientists named their find the Kapuas Mud Snake, and speculated it might only occur in the Kapuas River drainage system.

The WWF, the international group formerly known as World Wildlife Fund, said 361 animal and plant species have been discovered since 1996 on Borneo, underscoring its unparalleled biological diversity.

But it said that widespread logging has left Borneo with only half of its former forest cover, down from 75 percent in the mid-1980s.

Indonesia and Malaysia have territory on Borneo, which is also home to the sultanate of Brunei.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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For 'ancient grains,' a future in the American diet
Amaranth, quinoa, others finding a following

Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Posted: 7:04 p.m. EDT (23:04 GMT)

Amaranth, once grown by the Aztecs, has twice as much iron as wheat and is higher in protein and fiber.

ALBANY, New York (AP) -- Amid the aisles of spaghetti and canned peas, cereals and breads made with mysterious-sounding grains such as amaranth and quinoa are sprouting up at major supermarkets.

Wheat is still king of this country's whole grains, but the appearance of such alternatives indicates consumers are beginning to expand a niche market once relegated to the obscure corners of health food stores.

"People are realizing there's a benefit to eating a diversity of grains -- and these grains have some incredible nutritional properties," said Carole Fenster, an author of numerous cookbooks that incorporate wheat-free grains.

New federal guidelines recommending three servings of whole grains a day have put a spotlight on wheat, but exposure to barley, brown rice and other options has also grown, said Alice Lichtenstein, chair of the nutrition committee at the American Heart Association.

According to the marketing information company ACNielsen, sales of products with whole grain claims on their packages for the year ending April 22 increased 9.5 percent from the previous year.

NuWorld Amaranth, one of the country's main buyers of amaranth, reported a 300 percent increase in sales in the past three years. Bob's Red Mill, which sells alternative wheat-free grains, saw a 25 percent increase in sales in the past year, with quinoa driving the bulk of the growth.

Amaranth, grown for millennia by the Aztecs, has twice as much iron as wheat and is higher in protein and fiber. Quinoa, an ancient Andean crop, has less fiber but more protein and iron than wheat.

It may take some time for the unfamiliar grains to find broad acceptance. The American palate is still adjusting to whole wheat, and amaranth's distinct, slightly nutty taste could take some getting used to.

One reason for the fledgling demand is a growing awareness of celiac disease, which is triggered by gluten, the protein found in wheat. Symptoms range from severe cramping to chronic fatigue and even organ disorders. The condition is believed to affect about 2 million Americans, with others sensitive to the protein.

There is also a growing crossover market of health-conscious shoppers in search of the most nutritious grains, said Diane Walters, spokeswoman for NuWorld.

ConAgra Mills is working with farmers to expand the supply of sustagrain, a type of barley with a 30 percent fiber content, said Don Brown, vice president of business development at the company.

Products made entirely of amaranth and quinoa may not hit the mainstream anytime soon, but the demand for such grains as ingredients is likely to get a boost as multigrain products proliferate, said Robert Myers, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute, a research center in Columbus, Mo.

"Once they get past corn, wheat and oats, they'll eventually get around to picking up grains like amaranth," he said.

Alternative grains also benefit from the popularity of organic goods, Fenster said -- Whole Foods even has a line of bakery goods devoted to gluten-free diets.

"As people go into those stores, they can't help but notice those products," she said.

Supply of some alternative grains is still limited, however. Estimates of U.S. farmland devoted to amaranth, for example, range from 1,000 acres to 3,000 acres -- compared with 50 million acres for wheat, according to the Thomas Jefferson Institute.

But the supply of white wheat in the country was also limited until Sara Lee recently launched its white wheat bread, said Cynthia Harriman, director of food and nutrition at the Whole Grains Council. To ensure adequate supply, ConAgra began contracting with farmers about five years before the product launch.

The same thing could happen for other grains that are easy and inexpensive to grow, Myers said.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Whooping cranes hatch chicks in wild

Tuesday, June 27, 2006; Posted: 12:31 p.m. EDT (16:31 GMT)


Two adult whooping cranes with their young at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin.

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- A pair of whooping cranes has hatched two chicks in central Wisconsin, marking the first young of the species to be hatched in the wild in the eastern United States in more than 100 years.

The new arrivals will join about two dozen young cranes that will be added this year to a second migratory flock of the endangered birds that is being established in North America.

Operation Migration, the nonprofit group trying to build the flock, posted photos on its Web site showing two brown chicks being tended by their parents in the thick grass of the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin.

Joe Duff, who heads Operation Migration, said the successful nesting was the second attempt by the adult pair this season. The adults had abandoned their first nest.

"Seems the first try was just practice for this grand event," he wrote on the Web page, while also cautioning that the parents still face the challenge of keeping the young alive until able to fly.

Duff, reached by telephone Monday evening, said the chicks could be especially vulnerable to predators because the adults have never before had young to protect and must learn parenting skills. Crane chicks are also highly competitive, and when two hatch in the same nest, sometimes only one survives.

"If they both survive, it's going to be terrific," Duff said.

He said he expects the cranes hatched in the wild to migrate with their parents.

As part of the project, now in its fifth year, cranes hatched in captivity at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland have been raised at the Necedah refuge and led south by ultralight aircraft in the fall to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Florida. They migrate back north on their own in the spring.

The flock now numbers about 60 birds, with 22 newly hatched young ones being raised for release this fall.

Duff said this year's group of young cranes from Maryland was shipped to Necedah on Monday, and those eight cranes include another first -- a bird conceived in the wild but hatched in captivity.

Researchers in Wisconsin had collected two eggs after determining the parent weren't diligently tending their nest. The eggs were incubated and flown to Maryland, where the cranes hatched out but only one survived, Duff said.

The only other migrating flock of whooping cranes numbers about 200 birds. They fly from Canada to winter on the Texas Gulf Coast. The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, was near extinction in 1941, with only about 20 left.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Did ancient Amazonians build a 'Stonehenge'?
Archeologists think stones possibly a prehistoric observatory

Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Posted: 10:04 a.m. EDT (14:04 GMT)
THE DISCOVERY: A grouping of 127 granite blocks archaeologists believe may be the vestiges of a prehistoric astronomical observatory arranged along a grassy Amazon hilltop.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The blocks, some as high as 9 feet, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill. On the shortest day of the year -- December 21 -- the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

THE SIGNIFICANCE: Experts say the find indicates early inhabitants of the rain forest were more sophisticated than previously believed.

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory -- a find archaeologists say indicates early rain forest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.

The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.

On the shortest day of the year -- December 21 -- the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

"It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory," said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute.

"We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture."

Anthropologists have long known that local indigenous populations were acute observers of the stars and sun.

But the discovery of a physical structure that appears to incorporate this knowledge suggests pre-Columbian Indians in the Amazon rain forest may have been more sophisticated than previously suspected.

"Transforming this kind of knowledge into a monument; the transformation of something ephemeral into something concrete, could indicate the existence of a larger population and of a more complex social organization," Cabral said.

Cabral has been studying the site, near the village of Calcoene, just north of the equator in Amapa state in far northern Brazil, since last year.

She believes it was once inhabited by the ancestors of the Palikur Indians, and while the blocks have not yet been submitted to carbon dating, she says pottery shards near the site indicate they are pre-Columbian and maybe older -- as much as 2,000 years old.

Last month, archaeologists working on a hillside north of Lima, Peru, announced the discovery of the oldest astronomical observatory in the Western Hemisphere -- giant stone carvings, apparently 4,200 years old, that align with sunrise and sunset on December 21.

While the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs built large cities and huge rock structures, pre-Columbian Amazon societies built smaller settlements of wood and clay that quickly deteriorated in the hot, humid Amazon climate, disappearing centuries ago, archaeologists say.

Farmers and fishermen in the region around the Amazon site have long known about it, and the local press has dubbed it the "tropical Stonehenge" -- referring to circular arrangement of stones outside Salisbury, England.

Archeologists got involved last year after geographers and geologists did a socio-economic survey of the area, by foot and helicopter, and noticed "the unique circular structure on top of the hill," Cabral said.

Scientists not involved in the discovery said it could prove valuable to understanding pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon.

"No one has ever described something like this before. This is an extremely novel find -- a one of a kind type of thing," said Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida's Department of Anthropology.

He said that while carbon dating and further excavation must be carried out, the find adds to a growing body of thought among archaeologists that prehistory in the Amazon region was more varied than had been believed.

"Given that astronomical objects, stars, constellations etc., have a major importance in much of Amazonian mythology and cosmology, it does not in any way surprise me that such an observatory exists," said Richard Callaghan, a professor of geography, anthropology and archaeology at the University of Calgary.

Brazilian archaeologists will return in August, when the rainy season ends, to carry out carbon dating and further excavations.

"The traditional image is that some time thousands of years ago small groups of tropical forest horticulturists arrived in the area and they never changed -- [that] what we see today is just like it was 3,000 years ago," Heckenberger said.

"This is one more thing that suggests that through the past thousands of years, societies have changed quite a lot."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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